Hate mowing your lawn? Get a robot to do it.
Like a robot vacuum, the Automower is designed to run often. Instead of mowing once a week, it’s designed to mow much more often — even every day.
Raise your hand if you enjoy mowing your lawn.
I don’t have a particularly large yard, but mowing the grass is not something I look forward to, even though I love to look at a freshly mowed lawn.
I’d heard of robot lawn mowers, but until recently, I had never seen one in action.
Husqvarna made arrangements for me to visit a beautiful home outside Dallas, where it had several Automower models up and running. My guide was Garrett Baker, who is the Husqvarna robotics installation and training manager.
Husqvarna has a variety of Automowers that range in price from $1,200 to $4,800 I concentrated on the $1,800 Automower 315X, which is designed for yards up to 0.4 acres.
How does it work?
The first thing I had to do was erase all my expectations.
I thought the Automower would work like my robot vacuum, which cleans the perimeter of my rooms, then makes passes back and forth until the entire room is cleaned.
Like a robot vacuum, the Automower is designed to run often. Instead of mowing once a week, it’s designed to mow much more often — even every day.
When the mower sets out from the base station, it shoots off in a direction and mows until it reaches an obstacle, such as a tree, which will cause it to stop and take off in another direction. If it runs up to the perimeter wire, it will also stop and take off in another direction.
If you sit there and watch it mow, you’ll go crazy.
There is no pattern to the mowing. It does no back-and-forth mowing. There will be no stripes in the yard. The grass will just look freshly mowed all the time.
Automowers also run silently.
I’m not kidding. You can be three feet away and hear nothing. I had to ask whether the mower was cutting as it rolled along — it’s that quiet.
The 315X has LED headlights, but only for you to see where it is.
Double-edged blades
The Automowers cut with three very small double-edged razor blades that are designed to take just a very little off the top of the grass. These tiny clippings are invisible as they settle into the lawn.
You can use it to cut longer grass, but it will take longer, and it will leave behind visible clippings.
The blades are easy to swap out with just a screwdriver, and replacements are $25 per set. The blades are double-edged, and the mower reverses the rotation direction every other trip, so you get twice as much life from a set of blades.
The blades are sandwiched between two metal disks under the mower, and they are exposed only when the disks are turning. When the mower finds an obstruction, the rotation stops, and the blades retract back into the disks.
The 315X also has GPS (not all models do), so it knows what parts of your lawn have been mowed. The GPS can also help you find the mower if it is ever stolen.
Living outside
Automowers are designed to live outside during mowing season. Getting wet won’t hurt them, although you will want to modify the schedule to not mow on rainy days or days when you water the lawn.
The mower charges on a base station that is placed in your yard close to a power outlet. The mower has to be able to get back to the base when the battery runs low and when it stops mowing.
The 315X’s battery can mow for 70 minutes before it returns to the base to charge for 60 minutes, then it takes off again to continue mowing.
The base station is also the beginning and end of the perimeter wire.
You can run the wire yourself, but after seeing what is involved in a yard with flower beds and trees to mow around and sidewalks and driveways to cross, I think I’d spring for professional installation from a Husqvarna dealer. Installation starts at $500, but the price will vary depending on the size and complexity of your yard.
The idea is to let the mower do its job unattended, and if you don’t have the yard wired correctly, you will have areas of the yard that don’t get mowed or places where the mower gets stuck.
You can have the wires placed on top of your lawn (held down by stakes), or you can have the wire buried a few inches deep.
Mowing style
If your grass is really long, you may want to mow it one last time with your old mower so the Automower can start with a short lawn, but you don’t have to do that.
At first, you’ll need to give the Automower a few days to get the yard in shape.
Setting the mowing times in the app is as easy as making an appointment on your calendar.
Baker said he likes to give the mower ample time to do its work and to set it to run every day except for days when the lawn is being watered.
I asked Baker how the mower knows it’s finished, and he told me it’s never finished. That’s the beauty of having an Automower: It doesn’t mind mowing your lawn. You have to give it enough time to do its work, and you’ll be rewarded with grass that is never long again. If the Automower is set up correctly, your yard will never look shaggy.
Jim Rossman reviews technology for the Dallas Morning News.